Settling The Sangre's Series

My name is Silas Horn. I am a trapper, and one of the first to be known as a freetrapper, in the wilds known as the Rocky Mountains. Now, I have been called a lot of things in my life; Officer in the United States Navy, pirate, criminal, and prisoner. Even my guide and friend, Long Walker,  calls me Wandering Dog. I could never tell if it was an insult or a compliment, but that didn't matter to me anyway. But I digress. I guess there's some truth in all these things but first and foremost, I love to see new places. If I were to give weight to any words to describe myself I would use 'gentleman adventurer', but that may be a bit of a stretch. I have traveled to places no white man has seen before, despite the adherent risks. I was always this way. Never one to feel the need to remain at home, even as a child I would fritter away the hours finding new places to play ranger in the woods near my home. As I grew older, the need to find and see new places only grew into an overwhelming drive to GO! I have seen mountains no white man ever has before! I have been to places only Indians dared go! But now as I grow older and wiser, I wish for a place to call my own. A home where I can live my life as I choose and not beholden to some king, president, or governor of any kind! This modern life has become twisted and overrun with new-fangled inventions and machines that are supposed to make life easier for humankind. But to me, the wild places have always drawn me to them! The deafening silence of the open plains, or the roar of a furious sea. If there was somewhere to go to see something new, I went! Well, now, even some of the wild places have become filled with the King's men. The East India Trading Company and the Hudson Bay Company are growing rich from the work of men like me, while we remain poor. Well, that will simply not do for me! I will go further, I will go higher, and I will assume the risk of danger so that I may remain free! Free trappers like me work for ourselves and we do it with a lust for adventure and the sheer will to survive even the harshest climates to do what we love! For some, it is about the money they can make from not having to use all their profits to resupply from the Company's stores. For others, it is an escape from a shady past. And for a few, it is an opportunity to turn one's life around and be someone new! But for me, I love the adventure! What will I encounter around the next bend, or over the next ridge? Now that I have found these Rocky Mountains, I want to see them all! Maybe, just maybe, among my adventures there I will find a place that I can finally call home!

Ok. So… Where were we that last time you guys came to visit? Oh yeah. The time I got caught alone on the wrong side of the mountains. I had been captured and I had to escape from the Indians. That was in Northern Wyoming that time. SO let me back up a little bit for a moment so I can get the story straight and then I'll continue. My partners Tom Sweet, Paul McVeigh and I have been working in the Rocky Mountains for a couple of years now and have done quite well indeed. The first season I did well enough to outfit my own party of trappers and hunters and move into fresh territory. While the crew was doing well with their jobs in the rivers, streams and lakes of the mountains, I went on a scouting trip into deeper country. What I found there was a rich, untapped new trapping grounds for the next season my men and I would once again spend the winter in search of better places to trap beaver. I also found there a people I have never encountered before, and had almost lost my life in the venture. Though I was lucky to escape the Indians with my life, I was injured in a fall and had to spend weeks in a cave to rehabilitate well enough to rejoin my men. I was saved by a very strange man who lived in the cave; alone for years in the wilds of a savage land. He called himself Father Levetti, and claimed to be a Catholic priest with a calling to minister and save the people inhabiting this region of the mountains; the Crow. It was the Crow who had taken me captive and from which I had to run for my life and escape a truly gruesome fate. I did not fully believe this so called priest, and upon further investigation into this cave home of his I had found what looked like a weapons and supplies cache left over from when the Spanish had invaded and occupied this region decades before. In looking over the cache of supplies I came across a map, and though it was in Spanish and I couldn't read it, I instantly knew the value of a map of the region to the south. A place called the Sangre De Cristo Mountains that stretched down into Mexican Territory, and a place the Mexicans even referred to with respect and fear. A place known as The Comancheria, or Comanche land. From what I had heard about these roving bands of Comanche and Kiowa further west, I truly hoped I would never have to fight them. They were, by reputation, the fiercest and most brutal of the tribes. Even the Cheyenne and Sioux who had fought them over territory and hunting grounds for ages had a great respect for their warriors fighting ability. It was rumored in the camps at rendezvous that a Comanche on his horse was the perfect plains warrior, and one to be feared! Now that I have rejoined my men and am healing well from this misadventure, I have new priorities to consider. For one we have lost two men to a mountain lion attack, Michael McNeil and Abe Hatfield. I am responsible for this, as they trusted me with their lives on this adventure and in that respect I have failed them. When we get to rendezvous and sell our furs, David must be paid his brothers share and seen on his way. Secondly, Abe's family must be contacted and given his share of the seasons reaping. Until then, it must be business as usual. In any event, I believe this map will be instrumental in finding new lands to explore and see what is there! So as I continue my story, I will begin where I left off last time you were here. But I will warn you, the story is not always pleasant, as life was not always pleasant. I had no idea what situation I would lead my men into next, and in truth, there were many times I feared for our lives, and did not think we would survive it!